Not being very musical this idea, skill, concept/gene "perfect pitch" both fascinates and puzzles me.
My musical family tell me that people who
have perfect pitch find learning music very easy- especially music theory.
These paragons with
perfect pitchcan also "pitch' a note when singing without help from an oboe, tuning fork or piano.
Apparently this is a
very useful skill if you want to study music at a very high level or tune pianos..
"But can't you guys do that?" I asked my family
"No- we need a piano" or "I know how much my pitch is out and adjust for it"
Comments like that leave me bemused.
Of course I can't sing any song in tune. But after a few singing lessons, I realised this was a matter of learning, listening and practice (On the forth lesson my singing teacher moved 4,000 K north to Queensland.)
So being an amateur psychologist and remembering Binet inventing the IQ test so you could work out who not to waste good $French Franks on educating. I thought "Why not do the same for music?" Is
perfect pitch a musical version of IQ?
I asked so how could you identify really young kids with this
perfect pitch and thus accelerate, facilitate and foster their musical education.
OR in many -
maybe sadly most?- cases make sure they got at least
some education in music!!
"Can't be done." was the stern family reply.
"Why not? How come?" I asked.
"The kid has to be old enough to
learn music theory first then you/he/she/teacher
discovers the pupil has
perfect pitch
"But what about all the people who will never study music theory?" (90% of kids?)
"There could be virtuosos,
undiscovered genius out there with
perfect pitch". I implored passionately.
"Year life's a bitch"
Gen X? Y? is tough
So Hypographers I pose the question
What and where, how and why, is prefect pitch?
How can it be identified say in a 5-6 year old or even younger?
So surely some bright budding child psychologist can come up with a test to screen kids with
perfect pitch and thus discover those people who can best and most easily learn music?
What about some cognitive research on
perfect pitch
Any of that about?
Where does
perfect pitch come from? Genetics?
My family insist
it can't be learned.
If genetic What is its evolutionary purpose? How many people can you expect to find in a population with
perfect pitch? Or will we never know that?
Does it make for musical virtuosos
or do those with
perfect pitch find music too easy to bother with?
Like many with very high IQs who never do Ph.Ds (most Ph.Ds have just slightly above average IQ- most are not high IQs but have other qualities like 'dogged determination' and hard work that get them to the top of the academic heap)
"Perfect Pitch". Can you test for it?
